What Do Entrepreneurs Learn When Coaching Each Other? Reflexive Peer Coaching in Creative Enterprise Education

This talk explores how to support entrepreneurs operating within the often precarious and resource-constrained creative industries. It introduces a triadic peer coaching model and explores the reflexive learning processes occurring within it. While coaching is widely recognised as beneficial for entrepreneurial growth, access to professional coaching (and other personal development opportunities) is often financially inaccessible for creative entrepreneurs, sole traders and freelancers working within portfolio careers and uncertain market conditions. Although peer coaching is increasingly used within entrepreneurial education, limited research has examined the specific learning processes occurring during reciprocal coaching relationships between entrepreneurs.

Drawing on practice-based research from delivering peer coaching interventions with creative entrepreneurs, the work examines what they learn when coaching one another through the rotating roles of coach, coachee and observer. Findings suggest that learning occurs while receiving coaching, but also through the process of coaching others and observing peer interactions. The triadic structure appears to create different positions from which entrepreneurs can learn, with dialogue, perspective-taking and reflexivity recurring across the coaching process. Participants report value not only from each individual role, but from the combined experience of coaching, being coached and observing. Peer coaching can also create temporary communities of mutual understanding that reduce feelings of entrepreneurial isolation.

The talk presents peer coaching as more than a useful low-cost support mechanism. The findings suggest that entrepreneurial learning within creative contexts may be socially and reflexively shaped through dialogue, observation and perspective-taking across reciprocal roles. This positions triadic peer coaching not simply as a developmental tool, but as a relational learning process that may be particularly suited to the uncertain and emotionally demanding realities of creative industry work. In addition to offering a replicable support model, the work contributes to discussions on entrepreneurial learning within creative enterprise education.